Prosecutors drop charges in 1993 Allentown homicide case

Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Investigations

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin announced Wednesday that his office is withdrawing homicide charges against Marcello Morales who had been accused of stabbing a 30-year-old Allentown man to death in 1993.

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin announced Wednesday that his office is withdrawing homicide charges against Marcello Morales who had been accused of stabbing a 30-year-old Allentown man to death in 1993. (Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Investigations)

Two months after his arrest in North Carolina and extradition to Allentown on charges he killed a city man in 1993, Marcello Morales will be leaving Lehigh County Jail a free man.

During a review of the 24-year-old homicide case, county prosecutors and city police determined that they would be unable to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Morales killed Edwin “Eddy” Torres during an early morning street fight on June 26, 1993.

On Wednesday, they withdrew all charges against Morales, who had been living in North Carolina under an assumed name.

“We are all comfortable, looking back through a rearview mirror, that this case can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” said First Assistant District Attorney Steven Luksa.

Morales, 46, formerly of Allentown, was arrested in late November on a fugitive warrant in a suburb near Raleigh, N.C. He waived extradition and had been awaiting a preliminary hearing in Lehigh County Court, which was scheduled for Friday.

The fact is it's a quarter-century later, and people are in position to say ‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I don’t recall.'— Steve Luksa, first assistant district attorney

Before his hearing, prosecutors and police had to put the case together again, Luksa said, using evidence recovered in 1993 and by reinterviewing witnesses who spoke to police following the killing. That’s where problems in the reinvestigation began.

He said all the witnesses in the case were located and have been cooperative and truthful.

“Time has a way of having an impact on people, places and things,” Luksa said. “Has time changed memories and perceptions? It has. The fact is it's a quarter-century later, and people are in position to say ‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I don’t recall.’”

Morales was charged with homicide soon after Torres, 30, was found stabbed to death during the 4 a.m. fight, and charges of homicide and possession of an instrument of crime were approved by then-District Attorney Robert Steinberg.

Morales, who was 21 at the time, disappeared from Allentown immediately after the killing, along with his wife and child, police said.

According to a criminal complaint filed in 1993 by now-retired Detective Glenn Granitz Sr.:

Officers were dispatched to the 300 block of North Sixth Street, where they found a man on the sidewalk bleeding from a wound to his abdomen. The man, later identified as Torres, was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Police spoke to a man who lived in the 400 block of Gordon Street who said he and Torres were walking through the parking lot of a tire shop in the 200 block of North Seventh Street when Torres was confronted and assaulted. The man did not say who attacked Torres.

After the assault, the man said, he and Torres ran to North Sixth Street, where Torres collapsed and said he was “cut.”

Police spoke to another man who told them he saw Morales assault Torres. The man told police that during the assault, Torres let out a grunt and bent forward. The man said Morales told him, “The other guy’s hurt,” according to police.

Allentown police said Morales and Torres were acquaintances, but authorities did not suggest a motive in the case and court records did not indicate what the assault was about.

Is he running or hiding from us or someone else or is there some family lineage there? I don’t want to speculate.— First Assistant District Attorney Steven Luksa on why Marcello Morales uses a different name

Investigators continued to work the case. Allentown cold case investigators, the Lehigh County Homicide Task Force, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals late last year tracked Morales to North Carolina, where he was living under the name Roberto Tomas Mendez, authorities said.

Luksa said Morales is expected be released “post haste,” but he does not know if Morales is returning to North Carolina. He said he was unaware of what Morales was doing in North Carolina and why he was living under a different name.

“Is he running or hiding from us or someone else or is there some family lineage there?” he said. “I don’t want to speculate.”

Calls to Morales’ lawyer in Philadelphia were not returned Wednesday.

Luksa said it’s always difficult to drop a case, but the decision was the right one.

“That’s the way the system is supposed to work,” he said. “Sometimes the toughest cases are the ones that you don’t prosecute.”

Luksa said the 1993 homicide investigation does not have many of today’s investigative tools, such as cellphone records, surveillance evidence and DNA and fingerprint evidence, which made solid witness testimony that much more important.

“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” he said. “After a quarter century, things change and they changed to the point that we can’t proceed in proving this case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

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